John Timmer reports: Up until recently, looking for the changes in DNA that contribute to human genetic diseases was a laborious process that involved tracking the changes through the generations of individual families. The completion of the human genome has changed all of that, allowing researchers to check for hundreds of thousands of individual DNA…
Author: Dissent
Lawsuits over Heartland data breach folded into one
Jaikumar Vijayan reports: A lawsuit consolidating 16 separate class-action complaints brought by financial institutions against Heartland Payment Systems Inc. has been filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. […] The amended complaint includes for the first time several statements that Heartland is alleged to have made regarding the controls it had…
Lawsuit: Heartland Knew Data Security Standard was ‘Insufficient’
Linda McClasson reports: Months before announcing the Heartland Payment Systems (HPY) data breach, company CEO Robert Carr told industry analysts that the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was an insufficient protective measure. This is the contention of a new master complaint filed in the class action suit against Heartland, which in January…
Confirmed: Thousands of Hotmail passwords leaked online (updated)
Tom Warren reports: Neowin has received information regarding a possible Windows Live Hotmail “hack” or phishing scheme where password details of thousands of Hotmail accounts have been posted online. An anonymous user posted details of the accounts on October 1 at pastebin.com, a site commonly used by developers to share code snippets. The details have…
Man charged with credit card fraud after hospital telethon
Even a telethon for a worthy cause can lead to trouble. Tony Lofaro reports: An Ottawa man is facing several charges after a police investigation into stolen credit card data at a hospital telethon in May. The Ottawa police organized fraud unit began its investigation after a report of stolen credit card data being used…
Laptop left on plane put pension fund participants at risk
On June 14, when a Verso Paper Corp. employee left a company laptop behind on an airplane, two documents containing names and Social Security Numbers of some former and current participants in the PACE Industry Union-Management Pension Fund were on the laptop. According to a letter (pdf) sent to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office,…